Researchers have found leptin – a hormone that regulates body fat storage, metabolism and appetite – in the Peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus), the mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) and the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata). How does the Arctic tern fly more than 70,000 km in its annual roundtrip North Pole-to-South Pole migration? How does the Emperor penguin […]
Tag: Peregrine Falcon
Why Are Birds of the Arctic in Decline?
With some species of Arctic birds experiencing steep drops in population and their prey also undergoing marked shifts, scientists are working to understand what role climate change is playing in these unfolding ecological transformations. On Coats Island, in northern Hudson Bay, thick-billed murres — members of the auk family — have been under assault on […]
‘Falcon cam’ reveals how the birds of prey close in for the kill
Scientists have strapped tiny video cameras to the heads and backs of falcons to learn how the birds hunt their prey. Footage from the on-bird cameras revealed the strategy the predators used in flight as they chased down crows and closed in for the kill. Rather than head straight for their target, the falcons kept […]
Peregrine Falcon
I saw this falcon at the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in Oceanville, New Jersey, on Christmas day, 2013. I would not have noticed it, but an adult peregrine circled around me. I looked at the ground where the adult had swooped lowest and I saw the young peregrine on the ground. I took […]
Petition: Save British Birds of Prey
Britain’s rarest birds of prey, including red kites, sparrowhawks and peregrine falcons, are being shot, trapped and poisoned in record numbers. This persecution might be completely illegal, but inadequate legislation in England makes it easy for gamekeepers to massacre any nuisance, real or imagined. The birds are being slaughtered because of a perceived threat to […]
Illegal bird deaths continue to rise in UK
Cases of the illegal persecution of British birds are continuing to rise, according to the latest figures from the RSPB. The Birdcrime report, published on Friday, shows there were 208 reports of the shooting and destruction of birds of prey in 2012, including confirmed shootings of 15 buzzards, five sparrowhawks and four peregrine falcons. In […]
Review: Bird Sense: What it’s Like to be a Bird, by Tim Birkhead
Who’d be a bird anyway? Chickens have bi-focal vision: one eye for the close-up work of pecking seed; one for the fox on the horizon or the hawk in the sky. Peregrine falcons don’t swoop directly on prey – as the crow flies, to coin a phrase – but in a wide arc, using the […]
August Migrant Shorebirds
I visited Daijyugarami, Saga prefecture, last Friday to see what birds had started migrating through. The highlights were a solitary juvenile Asian Dowitcher, a Long-billed Dowitcher in breeding plumage, a Red Knot also in breeding plumage, a Broad-billed Sandpiper, a Long-toed Stint, four Black-faced Spoonbill, one Saunders’s Gull, a few Black-tailed Godwit and plenty of […]